After seeing a single-season record for total
winnings at more than two million dollars for the NASCAR Winston Cup champion, Dale
Earnhardt and car owner Richard Childress were celebrated in New York City. And
following the NASCAR Winston Cup awards banquet was the perfect end to a perfect season: a
champagne party to end all parties! After all the speeches, awards, and
mandatory appearances at the post-event cocktail parties had been completed, Earnhardt,
Childress, and their championship team retired to their suite at the Waldorf-Astoria for a
few hours of sleep before heading to the airport for the return trip back south.

Earnhardt and Childress had earned their
champagne. With 11 victories during the year, they had far outdistanced their
nearest competitor. In fact, it was the earliest a team had locked up a title in a
decade.

With Wrangler Jeans no longer a sponsor, the
Childress team's car were now painted black and sported sponsorship from GM Goodwrench.
With his new sponsor in hand, Dale appeared headed for a third-consecutive
championship, looking nearly unbeatable the first third of the season. He won at
Atlanta and again at Martinsville and led the points race following Dover.
Earnhardt's toughest competitor seemed to be Rusty Wallace, whose Blue Max team was the
first to figure out the new, needle-nosed Pontiac Grand Prix. Wallace had yet to
win, but strong performances put him just 16 points behind Earnhardt as the teams headed
for the last race ever to be run at Riverside.

Wallace broke through there, winning the Budweiser 400 and taking a
four-point lead over Earnhardt. Elliott also would surpass Dale in the points
standing after a strong late season charge. Elliott won the title, followed by
Wallace.

Earnhardt's valiant effort to become the second
driver in history to win three consecutive championships failed in the pressure-packed run
to the championship. He was in third place, 232 points behind Elliott at the
conclusion of the season and had won just three times. Although most teams would
have been happy with 13 top-fives and $1.2 million in winnings, it was a disappointment
for Earnhardt and his car owner. Both spent a great deal of time during the winter
preparing to make a more successful run at the championship the following season.